NFL TAKES THE COWARDLY, CONVENIENT WAY OUT ON WATSON RULING
A six-game suspension is light for a star quarterback accused of sexual misconduct by 25 women, but because a third-party officer determined discipline, Roger Goodell can tell critics: Don’t blame me
In these flim-flam times, when no corporation is believable in a hocus-pocus America, we’d like to think the NFL didn’t half-ass its latest moment of reckoning. You know: Moisten an index finger and hold it high in the air to determine the swirl of political winds.
But that stands as a farcically plausible explanation for how the league settled on a light and convenient six-game suspension for Deshaun Watson, who wanted more than his hamstrings rubbed during multiple massage sessions. In this case, commissioner Roger Goodell can cop out and say the decision was made by a new third-party disciplinary officer — retired federal judge Sue L. Robinson, as appointed jointly by the NFL and players union. He can claim, truthfully or otherwise, that he’d pushed for a season-long ban.
“Don’t blame me,” Goodell can tell the suspicious masses.
Of course, under guidelines of the revised system, he immediately could have appealed her ruling and assessed his own punishment. But with an entire day and night to do so Monday, the boss had yet to say the league would demand a more severe sentence for Watson — and anybody holding out hope still thinks football doesn’t cause brain damage and that a team soon will sign Colin Kaepernick. Through Tuesday afternoon, the league remained quiet. An independent servant had done the commissioner’s dirty work for him, you see, which begs a messy question: Why would Goodell allow Robinson to categorize Watson’s conduct as “predatory” and “egregious” — with a “lack of expressed remorse” — yet suspend him for less than half of the 2022 regular season? Answer: This is the wishy-washy outcome the league wanted all along, viewing it as the path of least resistance and institutional damage.
As we’ve known for a very long time, Watson was accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct and lewd behavior during therapy treatments — which, on its face, would appear to warrant an indefinite suspension if not a career ban. Yet he never was arrested and didn’t face criminal charges, which suggests a wide-ranging smear campaign was orchestrated by a lawsuit-chasing attorney in Houston. Settlements were reached with 23 of 24 women who sued Watson in civil court — aren’t such agreements, in some sense, an acknowledgment of wrongdoing? But through every step of a drama that has spilled into a second season, he denied the accusations, never mind recent reporting by the New York Times that he met at least 66 women for massages over 17 months, including an offseason when his body had no wear and tear.
I conclude there are too many accusers. Not all are embellishing or outright lying. All it takes is one genuine story, and he’s guilty. But without a single charge, where’s the criminal evidence, much less the conviction?
So everyone just met in the middle here, including the soft-pedalers at the NFL Players Association, which will “stand by” the ruling while urging the league to do the same. Does this not reek of a negotiated compromise?
How cowardly of them all.
This way, the blowback isn’t hysterical from any direction or harmful to the almighty NFL brand as another lucrative season begins. This way, the Cleveland Browns aren’t completely wrecked for their foolhardy sin of acquiring a troubled quarterback and gifting him $230 million, the largest guaranteed sum in league history. This way, the owners can tell women’s groups that a six-game sitdown still constitutes more than one-third of a 17-game regular season. This way, Watson can keep all but $345,000 of his strategically backloaded money while knowing he’s coming back soon, baby! This way, fantasy owners can take a risk and know they’re getting an elite points producer. This way, northeast Ohio sufferers who’ve longed for a savior since the original Browns high-tailed it to Baltimore — 26 years ago — needn’t burn their Watson jerseys while the team sells more related merch and keeps playoff hopes alive.
This way, no one wins, but no one loses too much. This way, the league can justify in a 16-page investigation summary that Watson violated its personal conduct policy yet, somehow, didn’t breach it to the degree he should miss an entire season or be fined even a penny. And this way, more to the central and disgusting point, the league can send away Watson until his Oct. 23 return in Baltimore! — how nostalgically convenient, circle that date on your calendars, fans and gamblers! — while not telling us a peep about its so-called investigations of team owner Daniel Snyder, not to mention the missteps of two particularly powerful owners named Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft.
We’re delusional to think Goodell ever would apply the same standards of conduct discipline to owners — the people who pay him a preposterous wage, a reported $128 million over the last two years — that the league does to players. But can he at least make an effort to see if some owners are scumbags and creeps? He finally got around to Stephen Ross, who has impugned the league’s competitive integrity like no owner in memory, and stripped the Miami Dolphins of two draft picks, including a first-rounder next year, after finding Ross violated the anti-tampering policy in open discussions with Tom Brady and Sean Payton. But more importantly, the NFL fell short of punishing Ross after game-tanking allegations, though there was evidence he spoke to many Dolphins executives about prioritizing a higher draft slot over on-field results. Wasn’t that revelation worthy of additional penalties? Nope, Ross had been spanked enough and was given mercy — he just has to stay away from the team facility until Oct. 17, a wrist slap — which is the Goodell Way when it comes to the owners who pay him.
A reminder: Watson vs. the Massage Therapists was the first major player-conduct case using the new protocol to mete out punishment. Goodell was tired of treatment as a public piñata when he played judge and jury in numerous flammable cases, and the NFLPA didn’t trust him, either. So the league and union agreed on Robinson to supervise discipline.
Meet the new judge, same as the old judge.
The happy medium of six games is exactly how Goodell would have ruled, I say. Under the revised system, the NFL and NFLPA have three days to appeal Robinson’s decision in writing. If he desires, Goodell could thrust himself into his usual all-powerful role and take until mid-week to adjust her ruling — or appoint someone else to do so, which sounds hazy. But why get his hands bloody when Robinson is in place to absorb public criticism? What he SHOULD do, to prove he still intends to be tough on crime, is appeal the Watson ruling … and then suspend him the entire season.
Sure, yeah, right. Goodell already is on the back nine at the golf club. Roger and out. Installing Robinson was by design, right? For $64 million a year, being the commish is a great gig if LinkedIn ever lists it.
Meanwhile, he continues to hem and haw about the investigation that never ends. Curious, isn’t it, how the NFL finally got around to a Watson ruling when Snyder is allowed to conduct business as usual as owner of the Washington Commanders, with the cosmetic day-to-day help of his wife and a newly reconstructed front office? Congress wants Snyder’s hide and summoned him for questioning last week, but Goodell never has taken an urgent interest in shaking him down amid widespread allegations of workplace misconduct and sexual harassment.
Is Goodell stalling because he fears more fallout from a trove of 650,000 e-mails associated with the Washington case? Remember, former Super Bowl champion coach and broadcaster Jon Gruden is in lawsuit mode himself, claiming the league leaked a series of racist, homophobic and misogynistic e-mails that, for now, have ended his career.
Then there’s Ross, who was accused by his former head coach, Brian Flores, of offering $100,000 per loss in a tanking scheme to land the top pick in the 2020 draft. Flores also is suing the league and its 32 franchises — already a racially challenged group that has made a travesty of the Rooney Rule — for racial discrimination in its hiring practices. Might Goodell, who knows Flores quickly regained work as a Pittsburgh Steelers assistant coach, be hoping that Flores eventually drops the lawsuit? Don’t bet on it.
Jones, too, has had a terrible offseason. He was sued by a 25-year-old Congressional aide — extortion, he claims — who alleged the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys is her biological father. This came after the Cowboys paid a settlement of $2.4 million to four team cheerleaders who accused the team’s longtime public-relations executive, Rich Dalrymple, of leering at them as they undressed at AT&T Stadium. Those crises didn’t quite rise to the level of a league investigation, but on top of his failure to win a Super Bowl since 1996, Jones has become a league embarrassment. It doesn’t matter much if the Cowboys are worth $7.64 billion — the most valuable franchise in sports, per Sportico — when Jones keeps screwing up. What was he thinking, in a country ravaged by mass shootings, when he announced a partnership with Black Rifle Coffee? Gun owners love the brand and order roasts such as “Murdered Out,” “Silencer Smooth” and “AK Espresso.” And Jerry is in business with them?
“Please welcome America’s Coffee to America’s Team,” said the team, as Jones added, “Every cup of coffee in the stadium, every bag of Cowboys coffee sold, represents a step in fulfilling the Black Rifle mission.”
Last week, Jones apologized for referring to former Cowboys executive Larry Lacewell, who passed away in May, as “a midget.” Hours later, he said, “Earlier today, I made a reference which I understand may have been viewed as offensive.” Jones will be 80 in October. It’s time to go.
And what ever happened to Rub-and-Tug Gate? Remember when Kraft, the otherwise distinguished owner of the New England Patriots, was busted after paying for sexual services at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Fla.? Two prostitution charges were dropped, but the NFL could have investigated and punished him. “The personal conduct policy applies to everybody,” Goodell said as the case brewed in 2019. “Commissioners. Owners. Executives. Players. Coaches. And it will be applied to everybody. But it will be done after we get all the facts and have all the information. … We will be fair and smart about it, and that’s what we will do.”
They did nothing.
Maybe that’s why the NFL went soft on Deshaun Watson. If he’d been hammered with a full-season ban, the hypocrisy would have been blinding. He went to massage therapy for sex acts, but so did Bob Kraft. Thanks to a soft suspension that ends in weeks, the commissioner avoids criticism, which seems to be his main game these days.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.